XML is advertised as a way to define (or "mark up") your data to form
meaningful documents or messages. While the DTD or XML schemas work well
to define the marking (or tagging) of data, it seems they to do little to
define what the content of the data means.
For example, the data between a <NAME> start tag and a </NAME> end tag is
presumed to be a character string containing a name. The data between an
<AMOUNT> start tag and an </AMOUNT> end tag is probably a string of
numeric characters representing an amount. However, what does the data
between a <MARITALSTATUS> start tag and an </MARITALSTATUS> end tag mean.
It can be assumed that the data indicates something about the person's
marital status but what do the codes used in the data mean? Maybe 0 means
"single", 1 means "married", 2 means "divorced", etc.
How can the codes that are used in such cases be indicated in the DTD or
schema?
Mark Everman
Lead System Engineer
ACI Worldwide, Inc.
(402)390-7756
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